Pomelo Market AKA Plant Street AKA C@*% Street

This Saturday my dear neighbor offered to take me and another neighbor to "Plant Street." Plant Street is also known as Pomelo Market, which, if one mispronounces the tone(same word, different emPHASis of certain syLABle), it can be understood as "Male Part***" Street.

***"Male Part" is what my 70 year old Vietnamese teacher called it***

(This is why my neighbor told the taxi where to go)

Luckily, we arrived at Pomelo Market and not Male Part street. Therefore, the decided to grab lunch before shopping for plants. No one in the group of 5 knew where to eat, so we asked a few local vendors who recommended that we "eat in the market." So helpful---Oh wait, not at all. So we ventured off and found a group of food vendors that looked decent and semi-busy. Per the advice of my friend J(yes, most of my friends are named J here), I decided to order some kind of crab soup. However, what I got was this:

Ground crab, fish sausage(the rectangle stuff), rice noodles and the blandest of the bland broth. My friend J said to me "I am sorry your lunch was so lame." You win some, you lose some.

After lunch, we headed to the plants:

An alley in Pomelo Market

However, we were jonesing for a snack, and the ladies selling them on the street were very persuasive.

Street snack wrapped in banana leaves: I had no idea what this was going to be.

What we thought was tree sap is actually cooked rice flour and sugar--although another friend was convinced it was tree sap. It was very chewy and semi-sweet, I would eat it again.

In the middle; lotus root/nut. It tasted a bit like macadamia nut. It was pretty good!

After our snack, we REALLY headed out:

the carnivorous Pitcher Plant

beautiful flowers that no one would bargain with us for

Lots of blooms!

Lowes Garden Center; eat your heart out

Beautiful bonsais!

After some bartering and some delivery negotiation, I purchased these six plants:

I need to buy some pots for a few of them, but I am very happy. I went home and rested up for the Adult Halloween Party. We went out and had a great time, I will post more pictures tomorrow. Today's Kid's Halloween Party postponed due to the wrath of Tropical Storm Son-Tinh. It has been rescheduled until tomorrow; I will post Halloween pictures then!